I am all for shitting on the New Left, but but by god they really don't even know New Left was a movement in the west during the 60s and 70s
I hate anything called "New" anything. Because before long, it's not new any more and then you're stuck with a misleading name. 😡
Main currents in the Western Left
1945-1975: Openly socialist, yet reformist, active in trade unionism, peace movement and distrustful of the USSR.
Fate of this generation of leftists: Formed the left wing of Social Democratic Parties or right wing of the communist parties. Eventually, started dying out, getting integrated into social democracy like figures like Jeremy Corbyn and after 1990 mostly faded away.
1965-1980: Radical Liberal, focused on social progress over socialism, sexual liberation, youth rights, environmentalism. Strongly anti-soviet, but supportive of alternative communist movements like Hoxhaism, Trostkyism or Maoism. Of course, it ended abandoning these for social democracy or liberalism within this time period.
Fate of this generation of leftists: Got involved in neoliberal and neoconservative politics from the start after denouncing their previous radicalism, supported military interventions for "human rights" and cheered on the fall of the USSR as a "new start for socialism". Among those that remained communists, a large amount is the core of political cults that have managed to survive 1990.
1980-1989: Lifestylist, politics through subcultural belonging. Punks, red skinheads. Large influence of the LGBT+ rights movement, since it was gaining prominence and getting lowkey murdered by intentional neglect. Environmentalism (of the anti-nuclear kind) and the peace movement were the core of this era.
Fate of this generation of leftists: Faded away into obscurity and inactivity.
1989-2011: Anti-Globalization as the main focus of political activism; an opportunistic denunciation of the USSR and other AES (except Cuba), anti-racist and supportive of open borders. More anarchist than any previous post-war period of leftist activism and any successive period -> focus on creating dual power in isolated neighborhoods of large cities leading to the creation of pockets of leftist support like Hamburg-St.Pauli or Athens-Exarcheia.
Fate of this generation of leftists: mostly integrated into "democratic socialist" projects or back into liberalism. The Occupy movement was its last hurrah, after which a shift can be felt.
2011-2018: Not anti-globalization or critical of imperialism anymore (outside of small groups), yet still supportive of open borders. The main focus is anti-fascism and environmentalism, as well as LGBT+ politics. A recovery in manpower is felt since the 90s and enthusiasm is high, especially in the United States and United Kingdom.
Fate of this generation of leftists: yet unknown
2018-Now: Increased infighting on the base of campism (China/Russia good or cringe?), split of some groups based on revisionist positioning on core issues like Trans rights, nationalism or the coronavirus pandemic; widespread sense of disorientation on the question of "what is to be done?". Increased focus on third worldism, decolonization and indigenous rights, especially in North America. Moderate resurgence of union activity.
Arguably, that never went away. The shrinking manpower since 1983 didn't help either.
1945-1975: Openly socialist, yet reformist, active in trade unionism, peace movement and distrustful of the USSR.
We can actually put a hard end date on these guys: 1956, when the Soviets intervened in Hungary. De-stalinization really hurt western communist parties and then the intervention caused most of them to split into "hardline" and reformist tendencies, which all fizzled out or became decrepit (with help from the FBI). Also, communists in the west have a earlier history than 1945. In the 1930s the Communist Party was relatively popular in the US and had a civil rights emphasis. In the 1920s you had the first red scare. Debs and major union battles in the 1900-1910s, plus first peace movement. And the 1880s you see major anarchist activity and the Haymarket affair. Before that there are some scientific socialists but also a lot of utopian commune movements.
I am not a trot. Even if I were, going "haha get pickaxed" is a questionable response.
I know parties that split over the question "is China Socialist?". The DKP in Germany is one of them. In fact, the splinter group "Kommunistische Organisation" split like a month ago over the question of "should communists support Russia in the war in Ukraine?"
It absolutely is often a dogmatic view of either full embrace of the PRC/Russia or their denunciation as revisionist - regardless of their actual nature and a wedge issue in the left.
Earth First!, hardcore and queer culture are a single thread that connects the politics of the 80s to the politics of the 2010s. It's not that these people "faded into obscurity" or integrated into democratic socialist projects (although that does happen). They're often the backbones of modern left spaces as holders of institutional memory and funders of these projects.
Yeah say what you will about the OG New Left but at least you had funny figures and folks who supported Hoxha or Mao and called all the other Berkley reading groups revisionists.
My favorite Marxists.org index, just a hundred responses to one anothers articles in defunct marxists papers and various splits in splits in splits of SDS. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/index.htm
"I feel bad. This is clearly the fault of [group I invented just now]."
That's what this behaviour amounts to. They're having a bad day, they feel moody, and some concoction of things they recently interacted with made them decide this is the fault of some spurious group they can't even define.
People do marketing degrees to learn how to manipulate this behaviour.
Yeah kinda.
A lot of this phenomenon is the reason why recency-bias is so heavily manipulated by marketers. The tendency for you to unconsciously attach a feeling to something you saw recently without ever consciously having had a thought about that thing (such as that chocolate bar you saw on the end of the aisle).
People have a big ole mood about something and then attach it to something else without really understanding the mechanics of how they associated the two. Sometimes it's literally just being tired that makes them doomerish like this, and then they end up coming to all kinds of weird conclusions about the mood they're having.
Is this why Sartre regularly practiced thinking about the world as if each facet of it was a novel new concept?
Making it up would require at least coming up with a single working definition... this is just stream-of-consciousness bs.
I'm always surprised when people actually respond to questions like this, when responding makes it abundantly clear you've been talking out of your ass. He has to know he looks like an idiot, right? So why not just ignore the question? Is it supreme arrogance or something about the culture of Twitter that compels people to always respond, even if it makes you look bad?
Shit like this always reads like some ChatGPT-ass response. Just pure click-bait engagement posting. No content. No context. Nothing remotely of value being presented. Its just a MadLibs word scramble intended to get people to see their name in your feed.
supreme arrogance
i'd hazard this. happens all over the internet not just twitter
I miss the glory days of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
Now everyone is fornicating, smoking
weedcrackmeth, and listening to the damned rap music.
I'm going to guess by new left he's referring to what he would consider "soy and woke" leftists, and by zoomer socialists he means patsocs and stupidpol types (basically socialists who consider starbucks workers to be proles vs "socialists" who don't).
The only reason normies hate us are vibes-based reasons.
The biggest obstacle to the leftist project is that the human race are mostly just a bunch of mindless psychopaths.
